Melbourne musician Geoffrey O’Connor explores conquest and seduction in his new solo CD

Anthony Carew

The songs on Geoffrey O’Connor’s second solo LP are all about girls, character sketches of conquests, conspirators and conundrums. The soiree setting of album closer Centre Of The Room (“Do you know whose party this is? Neither do I”) calibrates O’Connor’s lyrical universe: women in the middle, he the wallflower watching on. If that sounds a little creepy, it’s perhaps the point: O’Connor’s sexless salad days fronting baroque-pop boffins Crayon Fields a lifetime ago. After 2011’s Vanity Is Forever embraced the electronic and ersatz, Fan Fiction gets glossier and goes further: its syrupy synths and soft-touch drumpads the sounds of sleazy `80s seduction.